This attacking force had a dozen mortars, a handful of anti-armor weapons and twenty of his snipers with Barretts. He had three carefully hoarded anti-vehicle mines on the road, as well as a demolition charge. Only a thousand men had been able to be gathered for the second force, and it worried him. Still, he still had the Ace that hadn’t been used. Bethany Anne had eight Black Eagles on standby. She’d also cleared and dropped off the Spetsnaz that had defected or been captured by the refugees. Two of them had been willing to carry out the brutal orders against the refugees without the implied threat of being killed by their more ruthless comrades. The pair had been executed by the rest of the willing defectors. The rest had arrived earlier and were acting both as observers and poised to disrupt any retreat by the relief forces.
Boris had contempt for Konrad’s open and easily-disrupted plan. The bases the vampire had built or secured gave him enormous strategic reach but were too dispersed to support each other. They were tactically vulnerable. This was true even if four of them provided jump-off points to nuclear sites.
Tactically, they were at least two days apart from each other. Against the mobile forces of the Russian military, the best the vampire could do would be to pull off ambushes to slow consolidated forces down, while he gathered enough soldiers to force a confrontation. Against spoiling attacks and convoy raids like Boris used, Konrad could not even block and stop possible escape routes. Without forces gathered in large groups, the skirmishers of the Were’s forces would be impossible to block or avoid. Several bases were large enough to provide assistance but even fully-manned their effectiveness would be limited since the NVG had no helicopter or air support.
Perhaps they had planned on using the massacre of the Regressive Whites who had been ‘plotting against the President’ to speed their recruitment. If they had spun it deftly, it might have worked, enabling them to recruit large numbers of ex-military into their ranks. That did not even consider the rumors they could spread that would have attracted many of the garden-variety thugs. Loot a town under the guise of suppressing those who wish to topple the government would have been a great draw for those types of criminals.
It didn’t matter what Konrad’s plans had been. Through luck, Boris had delayed them. If it held, he would end those plans tonight.
Konrad was likely to lead his men personally. An attack on his forces this close to his base was a personal affront he could not ignore. He’d lead from the front, so Boris had to as well. All the troops had magazines pre-loaded with sintered metal and silver ammunition. A fifth of them had those magazines already seated in their rifles. They would not be as effective against humans, but it was a necessary precaution against a force that had already shown it had a number of Weres incorporated into its ranks.
The Spartans (as Boris had designated his small Spetsnaz force) reported that a column of trucks was moving out of the base towards the ambush site. That was something of a relief to Boris, although it made a lot of sense tactically. His forces had shown proficiency with anti-armor weapons and, since the battle north of Romanovka, had used no booby traps or prepared explosives. The number of APCs that they had taken out had to be hurting the NVG. Those couldn’t be cheap, even if they were getting post-service discards. He was lucky they didn’t seem to have tanks. But political troops such as the NVG rarely had armor or artillery. For them, it was a numbers game as often as not.
Boris checked his position again. His original body armor for both forms he had passed on to Janna when Alecta sent him a new set that she and ADAM had designed together. Janna had checked that it didn’t restrict her too much. She had insisted he wear the newer armor over every objection he raised. The new armor had overlapping plates that would spread to provide more effective protection in his Pricolici form. She also knew she was to keep clear of Konrad. Her skills had improved rapidly, but he doubted there was another Were who could take on a third generation Vampire like Konrad. Peter and Nathan together probably could, but that was it as far as he knew. Janna’s assignment was to cover his back from Weres and would be supported by Paul.
Paul had opted to wear a relatively thick ceramic-insert vest. He was the base of fire, or designated shooter, for the pair of them anyway. It was their job to protect him and his to shoot the head off any other Weres in their area. That was why he would be firing single shots tonight, to make sure that the attackers that came close to his friends did not survive.
Boris heard the trucks moving down the road towards them. It was probable the infantry was planning on dismounting a couple of klicks from the ambush and coming in on foot. Without APCs, that was the only logical action. He really hoped that Konrad was in the lead truck, but he doubted he would be that lucky, especially when he saw the fourth truck in the line. It had armor plates on its side. That was where the vampire would be. He could smell the odor of old, rotting blood coming from the column now, and was sure Konrad was in it. He was unlikely to have tried for deception on a rescue mission, even if his arrogance and ego would allow it.
The lead truck rolled over one of the mines and practically disintegrated, throwing its load of men outward in a bloody spray of body parts. There were yells from the column as the remaining seven hundred troops quickly exited the vehicles. They were moving far more smoothly than those that had been ambushed weeks ago. It looked like they had been practicing responses, or had training beyond what the first group had received. This was going to get bloody quickly. He just hoped that there were enough doses of the nanites to keep the fatal casualties down.
He heard a group of howls coming from the back of three of the trucks. That made things worse. At least thirty, probably more like fifty, werewolves. It was time to change. He nodded to Janna and picked up the AA-12. About ten werewolves were charging in his direction as he transformed. Once his sight cleared he saw that the wolves were concealed by a cloud in his mind. He knew that Konrad wasn’t as powerful as Michael. This must be a trick he’d thought up. Still, concealment wasn’t cover. He held down the trigger on his AA-12 and emptied the thirty-round drum of silver coated buckshot into the cloud, hoping to hit as many as possible. He was grimly satisfied when he heard four yelps and some cursing in German. He’d managed to at least hit the bastard. That left six that would be worrying more about him and Janna than the silver burning in their bodies.
He saw four head for Janna. Poor decision. With her training, six may not have been enough, but when one dropped to half-dozen steady cracks from Paul’s rifle, he knew she would be fine. There was not a werebear he knew of that couldn’t take at least three wolves. Not anymore.
The mental mist moved closer to him at an increased speed as he ripped the long hilted gladius from its sheath and let loose an unearthly roar. One of the remaining wolves lunged for his throat. He caught it in the air with his free paw and crushed its chest, throwing the body as hard and far as he could. In the background, he heard the steady distinct cracks of Paul’s Steyr AUG over the sounds of other combat. The sharp snaps of grenades detonating filled his ears, while the smells of the battlefield, of blood and ruptured bowels assaulted his nose. The stink of shit and urine from the inexperienced combat troops who hadn’t known to make appropriate actions before the battle lent a sour note to the odor of wet dog and human.